


Are You Happy Now?

by HeyPassTheAngst



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23091106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyPassTheAngst/pseuds/HeyPassTheAngst
Summary: Silver begrudgingly attends a fair with Lyra. Will he enjoy himself?Does he EVER enjoy himself?
Relationships: Kotone | Lyra/Silver
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Are You Happy Now?

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a brief oneshot for tumblr but then it got too long. Plus AO3 is a bit barren on SSS fics. Here's me doing my part.
> 
> sorry about Silver's edge

He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to this. Or rather, he had some idea why, but the thoughts - disorganized and incomplete - were overshadowed by his apprehension. 

The assault on his senses, from the moment they arrived, were relentless. Sweltering summer heat cooked him inside of the jacket he stubbornly refused to take off. All manner of intriguing smells, be they appetizing or fetid, mingled together in the air. People there too, of course, and far too many of them for Silver’s liking. 

He couldn’t think of a worse place to be then at a fair. Yet here he was. 

“You’re lagging behind!” Lyra called out, some feet ahead. The girl, in her feverish excitement, has a tendency to outpace whoever she was with, he noticed. Remarkable, considering her stature.

“It’s not going anywhere.” He responded curtly. 

“You’re moving like a slugma, and I have so much to show you. What, do I have to drag you by the hand?”

Silver pulled a face. “Ugh. No.”

“Then come on!”

Silver begrudgingly increased his walking speed, but not by much. He didn’t want to give her too much satisfaction, since he’d already agreed to one indignity for the day. He was feeling a bit suffocated at the closeness and volume of strangers when her voice brought him out of his thoughts again. 

“Hey!” She waved him over, looking elated. “Check this out, I wanna show you something.”

Lyra pointed at a food stall with her free hand (the other had inexplicably gotten ahold of some cotton candy, God knows when). It was plain, and fairly innocuous, save for the line of people that seemed a mile long, and twisted impossibly through the crowd so that Silver wasn’t quite sure where the beginning was. 

“What?”

“This is my favorite stall!” she said, undaunted by his lack of enthusiasm. 

Silver took it in. A large sign with a collage of pictures (all in poor quality), adorned the wall facing them. Greasy fried food of every shape and size on parade, running the gamut of acceptably unhealthy to a glorious display of hedonistic pleasure. 

“Whenever you buy something”, Lyra continued, “they’ll let you bring in any food you want, dunk it in tempura batter and fry it for a flat fee. It’s amazing.”

Silver noted a patron towards the front of the line with an armful of Rage Candy Bars and could only imagine the deviancy that would soon take place. “That sounds like a shitty business model.”

“It’s a gimmick.” Lyra said with a shrug. “It gets people in line. You wanna try it? I always wondered what would happen if I brought in cotton candy…”

He wanted to say, _Nothing would happen, because it would dissolve in the oil, nitwit._ But he remembered his resolution to be less antagonistic, so instead he just said, “I’ll pass.”

He watched Lyra whittle away at her fluffy stack of sugar as they meandered through the fair. Even with her mouth half full, she carried the bulk of the conversation, babbling about whatever she deemed noteworthy at lightning speed. Occasionally she would be recognized by someone in the crowd, and they would be swarmed with her admirers; most wanting autographs, others foolish enough to request a field challenge. She was polite, but she didn’t engage them, weaving in and out of the crowd while he plodded along behind her. They found sanctuary eventually as they made their way toward the outskirts of the fairground, where far less people were; mostly families with tired children. 

“If I stop for them we’ll be there all day, you know?” She said, tossing the last of her candy into her mouth. “You wanna sit for a bit?”

“Sure”. Of course, even Lyra’s energy wasn’t boundless. And he could use a rest himself.

They found a bench under a tree. From where they were, most of the fairgrounds were visible. Brightly colored tents and stalls painted the landscape, the occasional (suspiciously rickety) ride popping up here and there. In the distance he caught sight of a balloon drifting high into the sky, and the image of a toddler crying their eyes out flashed in his head so vividly that he swore he could hear the wailing. 

Wait, scratch that. He _could_ hear the wailing. 

Silver turned at the sound close by. There was a little boy sobbing his eyes out with an empty sugar cone in his tiny hand, and a blob of neon-pink melting into the dirt at his feet. His mother consoles him with promises to get a new treat. Behind them is…

Is…

“Hey, you good?” Lyra’s voice jolted him back to reality. “You’ve been staring at that ice cream truck for a really long time.”

He balked. “I’m not staring at the ice cream truck.”

“There’s nothing else to stare at over there, Silv.”

He didn’t respond. 

Lyra side-eyed him, looking contemplative. “Is something bothering you?”

 _Something’s always bothering me. I just don’t feel the need to announce it._ “Nothing’s bothering me.”

“You don’t need to get defensive… I’m just curious.”

Silver chanced a look at her face, nearly grimacing when he saw her hurt expression. _Shit, really? Fine._

“I haven’t… seen an ice cream truck in a really long time, that’s all.”

She brightened. “Oh. Did you like them as a kid?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Lyra looked at him, puzzled and expectant. 

“I never actually got to get anything from one. Just saw them around.”

“Wait, for real? You’ve never had ice cream truck ice cream before?” 

Silver wasn’t about to elaborate on the finer details of his childhood, even if the sight of the truck before them made him remember the feeling of the cold glass of his bedroom window on his forehead, and inspired envy as if it were passing lazily through his neighborhood without stopping for the thousandth time. 

Suddenly, Lyra stood. “Which one do you want?”

Silver blinked, stupefied. “I don’t want you to buy me ice cream.”

“Why not?” 

“I’m not a kid.”

“Okay, then buy your own ice cream.”

“That’s not the point!”

“ _Silver_ , come _on_. Just let me get you something.” 

Her voice dripped with misplaced disappointment, but there it was again, those goddamned baby-doll eyes of hers. Silver fought the image and lost. “Fine.”

She came back with a rectangular packet, tossing it in his direction. It was unlabeled, except for the row of blocked letters in fine print reading: FROZEN DAIRY DESSERT. “What is it?”

“An ice cream sandwich.” She chirped. “They were my favorite. Try it.”

Silver, not acknowledging the implication that he would share her childlike preferences, unwrapped the dessert and took a bite.

The sickly sweetness of the ice cream made his head buzz marvelously. Though his front teeth arched slightly from the temperature he found he didn’t particularly care, and contemplated immediately shoving the rest of the treat in his mouth right that moment before thinking better of it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something so nice; even been _allowed_ to have something so nice.

“Meh.”

“Meh?” Lyra looked mildly offended.

“It’s not actually all that good.” 

“Why do you keep eating it, then?”

Silver had apparently been taking bites through no conscious effort of his own. Damn it all. The already half eaten sandwich stared back at him innocently. “You bought it for me.”

“So? You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it…”

She doesn’t comment on the matter any further, but he can practically feel her smirking at him as he polishes off his ice cream. 

\---

Night fell on them faster than Silver had thought it might. He figured that was going to be the end of their excursion, but Lyra seemed keen on sticking around to watch the fireworks. 

They sat on a hill where others had gathered, most better prepared for the festivities than he and Lyra were; quilts peppered the hillside, with families and couples curled up together for warmth as the temperature outside dropped. 

“I never get tired of the stars.” Lyra said, seeming to admire how they blanketed the sky. Her eyes had a similar twinkle... “What about you?” 

“I never really saw them before coming to Johto.” Not that that was too worth lamenting over. Lyra looked doleful, anyway. 

“Really?”

“Lots of air pollution in Saffron.” He said, matter-of-factly. 

“Oh… That sucks.”

Silver shrugs.

A new kind of quiet fell over them. Some children ran by, sparklers in their hands leaving mesmerizing light trails wherever they went. The sight gave Silver an odd feeling. 

He snuck a glance at Lyra. She was looking at him with a yearnful expression, like she wanted to ask him something but could not. He quirked an eyebrow. 

“Do you like it here?”

That wasn’t the question he’d been anticipating. “...Because of the stars?”

“No, just in general, I guess…” She brought her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself tight. “I love my region, but you must miss Kanto, right?”

“Not really.” No point in lying about it. 

“Oh…”

Weirdly, she wasn’t prying. For a moment, Silver had a feeling of suspicion that she knew more than she was letting on. But that shouldn’t be possible, so he shook the feeling away.

She wasn’t looking at the stars anymore. Her chin rested on her knees, eyelashes fluttering delicately like she was ready to fall asleep. 

He was transfixed on her melancholy aura, and before he even realized it his mouth was running.

“I came here to find my strength.” 

She lifted her head. Soft brown pools met striking silver. He broke eye contact when the heat flushing his face became too much. 

“I…” Silver’s throat felt tight. “I needed a fresh start. I thought I could get it here. I thought I’d become strong.”

“You are strong.”

“Not strong enough. Not the strong I want to be.”

There was a beat of silence that made Silver feel oddly uncomfortable. For once he felt like he had more he wanted to say, even though every cell in his body was screaming that it was a terrible idea, and to just shut up already. Lyra speaks up again before he can entertain the idea.

“Hey, you remember that stall we saw earlier? With the “fry anything” feature?”

Silver was puzzled by this sudden topic shift, but he grunted in acknowledgement.

“The last year Ethan and I came here together… we were like, seven, maybe? We decided we were going to do the most ridiculous fried thing ever. We brought in a quadruple decker cheese sandwich, thick slices of milk bread and like, everything we could possibly shove into it, mayo, pickles, onion, tomato, like four different cheeses, just a real mess of a sandwich. It was like the size of a small child when we were done.”

“...Okay?”

“So we brought this monster sandwich to the stall, and they fried it for us. The outside was crispy, the cheese was super melty when we cut into it; it was awesome... Then after we had our moment of like, ‘this is the greatest idea seven-year-old-us ever had’, we weren’t really sure what to do next, because neither of us really wanted to eat it.”

Silver didn’t want to be invested in this story, but he couldn’t help himself. “So, what, you had them deep-fry a giant sandwich for no reason?”

“Not _no_ reason.” She objected. “We thought it would be funny, and it was. They had to skewer it in three places to get it into the oil in one piece. Then they had to fish it out with a shovel. People clapped when it was done!”

“Uh-huh…”

“Anyway, I had this fat stack of tickets from playing the games, and Ethan wanted them. So I told him he could have them if he ate the whole thing. So he starts to tear into it. About a quarter of the way through it, he starts to feel sick. Halfway through it he looks like he’s _really_ sick, and I started to feel bad, so I told him he could just have the tickets. But he wouldn’t stop eating it.”

Silver sniggered. “Why?”

“He said that he _had_ to finish it or it wouldn’t count. Like, the principle of failure was just, too much for his dumb little heart to bear.”

“That’s-” He sputtered, dumbfounded. “...Okay?”

“Yeah. As it happens, he _didn’t_ finish it, because once he got to ¾’s of the way he started to hurl everywhere! All these people staring at me and this little dumbass throwing up cheese...I had to take him to the bathroom to wait it out, and he vommed the entire walk over-”

“Lyra, this is fucking disgusting.”

“I have a point!”

“Then get to it!”

“Well, he was sick for so long that the prize stall closed up, and neither of us got to use the tickets…”

Silver to stared at her, unabashedly bewildered during the awkward pause that followed.

“My point, I guess, is that Ethan… had what he wanted. But he was so tauros-headed and fixated on this… arbitrary thing that he sabotaged his own happiness.” 

_...Do you just spend your time turning your gross life experiences into aphorisms or something?_

Silver laid back on the grass and said nothing. Lyra mimicked him just as the first of the fireworks started to pop off.

“Are you happy?”

So distracted by the cacophony of the explosives and the vibrant splashes of color, he didn't realize that he asked her the question until after he’d blurted it out. What was wrong with him today?

She seemed surprised by his question, but not put off. “I guess so? I’ve got a lot going for me, even if it’s not everything I want right this minute.”

He grunted noncommittally. 

“I sometimes think about retiring early and challenging another league. Kinda miss the travel, you know?” 

“Hm.”

“But I haven’t been here very long. Feels weird to leave now.”

“Hm.” 

This felt better. This felt natural, letting her take the lead in conversations. Her perfection was too...intimidating. Trying to connect with her just reminded him that he was broken. This way he could just… let things happen. Comfortably. 

Or at least, as much as that was possible.

“Anyway, I’m happy right now. Sharing this with you.”

Those words echoed in his mind, and he didn’t know what to say.

“It means a lot to me, that you came. I had a lot of fun.”

“...Don’t sweat it.” 

“I hope you had fun, too.” 

“...Yeah.”

They feel silent again, content to just let the fireworks bathe them in their color, and for all his contempt, Silver seriously considered it.


End file.
